Balancing idea: One-school-only magic?

[Nowhere Girl]

I was thinking about primary spellcasters and how -- as we all know -- they kind of just overwhelm every other class in the game, and an idea occurred to me. It's a simple and highly underdeveloped one, just something that popped into my head and hasn't been worked out in any detail yet, but it's one I wanted to share just the same.

The idea came to me when I was thinking about what makes wizards so overpowered, and I reflected that it's both the fact that they have a spell for every occasion and the fact that certain spell combinations are downright broken. That is, it isn't so much that individual spells are broken all by themselves (although a few may be), it's that they become broken when combined with certain other spells (for example, Celerity combined with Foresight, Time Stop, Forcecage and Cloudkill).

So here it is:

What if wizards were confined to only one school of magic? That is, you make a wizard, and at level 1, you have to declare yourself a diviner, a conjurer, an illusionist or whatever, and that's that. If you want another school, you have to actually treat it as a separate class (for example, being a conjurer 2/enchanter 1).

I'm not asking whether this would balance wizards against other primary casters (obviously it would make them far weaker than other primary casters unless they were treated similarly) -- rather, I'm looking at what this would do to wizards as they compare to non-casters if they were otherwise left completely untouched (no taking away metamagic feats or other goodies).

Thoughts?

[Azerian Kelimon]

No. Just....no. This makes spellcasters worse than Monks. No schools is SO good you can actually use only it. Even if Illusion comes sort of close.

[Arbitrarity]

Seconded. One option is using (and making) the "specialist" casters, like the beguiler, as they're pretty well balanced. Transmuter version, diviner, etc. That would seem to fit the theme, it weakens in maximum spells known terms, if they're built right, they can prevent most cheesy combos, and they allow you to actually give unique abilities to each class.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Yeah, but a bread 'n butter, no extra abilities, only ONE school (Even beguiler has more than one school) wizard sucks ass. Among other things.

[Arbitrarity]

Well, yeah. Badly.

You might survive with an SCM illusionist build with arcane disciple, but that only kicks in at REALLY high levels.

And it's cheesy as hell.

More like cheesy as heaven actually, what with the miracle bit and all.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Yep. Maybe two schools, three if you choose evocation (hey, if you're nerfing yourself that badly, you DO need some help) but you can't pick illusions. That should actually work, since it disable the (probably) most powerful school. And after all, everything Evo does, Conj does better with it's orbs.

[Lord]

Maybe they could have like three schools available. That might work.

[Edit] Ack Ninja'd

[Azerian Kelimon]

Nah, three allows for big cheese. I think two, with three if you pick evo but you can't pick illusion, would be best. Now, as for CoDzilla, that's a bit harder.

[Nowhere Girl]

Well, let's try a follow-up question, then!

Assuming for a moment that a wizard with only one school is less effective than a monk ...

And taking what we already know about a normal wizard, which is that he/she is more effective not only than a monk but than any other non-caster, by a fair margin ...

How many schools does a wizard need -- setting prestige classes completely aside -- to be as effective as a fighter?

To be as effective as a rogue?

Thoughts?

Edit: Nevermind, you guys beat me to this. :smalltongue:

[Nowhere Girl]

Nah, three allows for big cheese. I think two, with three if you pick evo but you can't pick illusion, would be best. Now, as for CoDzilla, that's a bit harder.

I think you could potentially do the same thing, as cleric and druid spells also have schools attached to them ...

[Azerian Kelimon]

Yep, but Clerics and druids are quite more dependent on many schools than a wiz. I mean, healing spells are one school, buffs are a few, utilities are dispersed, a divine caster usually NEEDS many schools, more than the "I cast shadow X and get this spell!" wiz.

[brian c]

I think a balanced approach might be to give some choices, although it's hard to defend from a fluff perspective:

Either Transmutation OR Conjuration

AND

Either Enchantment OR Illusion OR Abjuration

AND

Either Necromancy OR Evocation

AND

Divination AND Universal

So everyone would get 5 different schools, but only 2 of the generally accepted 5 strongest (Conj, Trans, Ench, Ill, Abj). You could tweak this a little, but I think the idea is good.


Example:

Time Stop is Trans, Cloudkill is Conj. You can't have both. Furthermore, Celerity is also transmutation, so you can do Celerity+Time Stop, but then you have limited options for what to do after that. Forcecage is Evocation, so if you want that you need to give up all Necromancy spells. Dimensional Anchor is Abj, so you can't do Dimensional Anchor + Forcecage.

Glitterdust and Grease are Conj, so you can't have those and stuff like Time Stop or Polymorph.


Edit: I should add, a houserule that I use (and which I find very reasonable) is that you can't case Shadow Evocation if you have Evoc as a banned school, and same for Shadow Conjuration.

[ocato]

How does making wizards less fun to play make fighters and monks better? Wizards may be strong, but I don't think most people play them as cheesily as their potential. Nerfing them that badly will hurt the innocent people who like evocation spells and are good natured and party-friendly.

[J-man]

How does making wizards less fun to play make fighters and monks better? Wizards may be strong, but I don't think most people play them as cheesily as their potential. Nerfing them that badly will hurt the innocent people who like evocation spells and are good natured and party-friendly.

Hurt innocent people... come on. It's just punch of geeks speaking of a game in the internets. Geeks whose ideas of how things should be can so totally be ignored.

[Chronos]

Edit: I should add, a houserule that I use (and which I find very reasonable) is that you can't case Shadow Evocation if you have Evoc as a banned school, and same for Shadow Conjuration.Ironic, considering those spells' history. In 1st edition, an illusionist was a completely separate class with a mostly-separate spell list, and in 2nd, illusionists automatically barred Evocation and Conjuration. The shadow spells were a way for the illusionist to approximate what he was missing.

And played well, a single-school wizard would still compare favorably with the other classes. In a recent thread asking for advice for a duel, I was surprised to discover that the strategy I was suggesting used nothing but Conjuration spells. Skillful use of Illusions can work well against any foe, and you eventually get access to most of Evocation and Conjuration as well. A Necromancer, given enough time, can build up huge armies of the undead. And even a single-school Evoker will still be more effective than a fighter against large enough numbers of low-level mooks.

The problem is just that it would take more skill to do well with a single-school wizard than it would with something simple like a barbarian. But really, I'm not sure that's such a big deal: Some players like to use more skill in a game than others.

[MaxMahem]

Unlike the others here, I think it could work quite well, although you would probably want to give the single-school caster some other benefits ala the beguiler to balance things out.

IE a single school caster who got a D6 HD, better skill points and some flavorful and nice class abilities would be quite balanced IMO.

For example you could have a necromancer who got a D6 HD, 4+int skill points, good fort and will saves, and a smattering of class abilities similar to the ones the various necromancy PrCs and advanced learning get could be quite balanced, especially if it got a large mainly necromancy skill list that it could cast from spontaneously like the beguiler. Not exactly what what you proposed but fairly close I think.

[Solmage]

You know... I like this idea a lot.

Yes, yes, it would make a wizard who only knows ONE school of magic useless. However, you would EXPECT the wizard to get more than one class by multiclassing, allowing lots of very interesting combinations.

If you then tweak the spells available a bit, this could be the basis for a pretty interesting game. You can then use this as a baseline to balance (nerf if necessary, but I'm sure that the monk still needs uptweaking, hehe) all other professions against.

Just for fun, let's see, a level 6 "wizard" could now be..

Conjurer 5/Illusionist 1

We then tweak some rules:
- Caster level = sum of all specialty wizard classes.

- Heighten increases the DC of your spell by up to your highest caster level at the cost of one of your highest level slots. (Thus an illusionist 6/evoker 5/conjurer 5 can improve the DC of his spells as if he were a level 16 wizard, while only loosing 1 level 3 illusionist slot (the highest slot he has). * Needs further thought and refinement, but seems necessary to keep up with saves.

- Some tweaking regarding spell slots may or may not be needed. I am not sure that having a ton of low level slots and only very very few high ones is a bad thing provided your low level spells can hit stuff just as well.

This guy is fairly competent. He has a buff or two, some direct damage attacks, some disabling or save or suck spells, and some melee defense (like flying steed). He also can, in a pinch, shoot a bow if he's elven. Since in this world magic and mages aren't a dime a dozen, investing in archery feats may be an actually good idea.

We would then need to balance melee classes. A start would perhaps be that you can't do more damage via stats, buffs and feats than the base damage of the weapon. So a two handed sword wielded by a very strong guy with power attack, charging, buffed, inspired by whatever you want, is simply not doing more than 2D6+12+whatever extra damage the sword has, and we limit how many and which enchantments a sword can have.

And then you need to adjust some of the creatures...

But in the end, I think it would really help create a very interesting, LOW power campaign, with a heck of a lot less 'hey, I'm level 18, let's go slaughter some defenseless dragons' feel to it, and replace it with 'we're level 18 .. but thats a DAMN dragon! Perhaps we should run...?' 'what do you mean perhaps? Does it look like we crafted a cunning ambush?! RUN!!'

Anyway.. at the very least *I* found your idea very interesting, for what it's worth :smallcool:

[Jacob Orlove]

Yeah, single-school casting is fine, although Conjuration is really really good. It would give a much stronger flavor to each class, and you could accentuate that with MaxMayhem's suggestions. I'd probably take advantage of those to balance out the various classes:
Evokers could get D10 hd, full casting in armor, and some free weapon proficiencies.
Diviners could get 8 skill points/level, and a much broader skill list. And let them take 10 on UMD checks.
Conjurers would probably just get the normal wizard stats.
...and everyone else would be somewhere in between those extremes.

[Nowhere Girl]

Conjurer 5/Illusionist 1

Now there's an idea! Perhaps call "wizard" the overall class still, then require the player to specify how the class breaks down (So a 9th-level wizard might be listed as "wizard 9 (conjurer 5/enchanter 3/illusionist 1)"). That would exempt the character from penalties for multi-classing because he/she isn't really multi-classing at all but rather choosing how to progress as a wizard.

Too, this gives the option to generalize without losing caster level ... or to specialize as much as you care to. You'd have to make hard choices: "Do I specialize in just one school and progress rapidly up the chain of spell levels? Or do I generalize at the expense of getting high-end spells sooner?"

You wouldn't be able to master all spells in all of the schools of magic any earlier than level 136, so the possibility of knowing all spells of all schools would be effectively ruled out. Generally, no two wizards would look exactly alike.

I think, though, that I'd also remove the damage cap from spells like fireball. Just as much of what wizards can do is brokenly powerful, most evocation spells are brokenly weak. There's no good reason for them to be.

[brian c]

I think, though, that I'd also remove the damage cap from spells like fireball. Just as much of what wizards can do is brokenly powerful, most evocation spells are brokenly weak. There's no good reason for them to be.

Actually, Evocation can be very good if optimized, which is not too hard to do. It's best done with Sorcerers though, and even then it's worse than a battlefield control, save-or-die/lose/suck "batman"-type wizard.

[Azerian Kelimon]

However, one thing needs to be clarified: if caster level equals the sum off all the specialties, then you get access to the highest level slots you'd get (for example, a conjurer10/illusionist 7 gets access to level 9 slots. Deep knowledge of one kind of magic allows you to advance faster in the others). However, you can only access X level slots to use Z school spells if your level in that school's class equals the slot's level. Thus, to cast 9th level conjuration spells, you need at least level 9 in conjurer. This way, you ensure there won't be people who say "I dip one level in all schools but evocation (because of the HD and ability to cast in armor), which I advance every time I can".

[Dervag]

I think a balanced approach might be to give some choices, although it's hard to defend from a fluff perspective:

Either Transmutation OR Conjuration
AND
Either Enchantment OR Illusion OR Abjuration
AND
Either Necromancy OR Evocation
AND
Divination AND UniversalI think you could justify a fair amount of that from fluff.

For instance, "wizards must specialize in either the magics of life manipulation or of energy manipulation" covers "Necromancy OR Evocation."

Likewise, "wizards must specialize in either manipulating matter that already exists, or calling new matter into being" covers "Transmutation OR Conjuration."

"Enchantment OR Illusion OR Abjuration" is a little harder to explain; maybe some kind of soul/mind/body triad where you can only focus on one element?

It seems hard to justify because it violates our preconceptions, but I can imagine making it work.

Maybe there should be some way to get a specific out of school spell, such as by casting it at a higher level. Or maybe wizards should be allowed to read scrolls from out-of-school spells. But I think it can be balanced and justified, though it might require tweaking the domain boundaries.


We would then need to balance melee classes. A start would perhaps be that you can't do more damage via stats, buffs and feats than the base damage of the weapon. So a two handed sword wielded by a very strong guy with power attack, charging, buffed, inspired by whatever you want, is simply not doing more than 2D6+12+whatever extra damage the sword has, and we limit how many and which enchantments a sword can have.In that case, the power of warriors does not scale well with level.

At the moment, the entire D&D system is based on the assumption that your combat effectiveness increases by (on average) about 40% every time you go up a level. This is a multiplying bonus, leading to exponential power increase. That underlies the CR/XP system, too.

The assumption is not true for all classes, which is part of the problem; wizards' power seems to increase by more than that 40%/level average while that of fighters does not.

If we break the exponential power growth assumption entirely, though, so that power increases linearly or caps out with level, the system falls apart and everything needs to be recalibrated.

[Dr. Weasel]

Just for fun, let's see, a level 6 "wizard" could now be..

Conjurer 5/Illusionist 1


However, one thing needs to be clarified: if caster level equals the sum off all the specialties, then you get access to the highest level slots you'd get (for example, a conjurer10/illusionist 7 gets access to level 9 slots. Deep knowledge of one kind of magic allows you to advance faster in the others). However, you can only access X level slots to use Z school spells if your level in that school's class equals the slot's level. Thus, to cast 9th level conjuration spells, you need at least level 9 in conjurer. This way, you ensure there won't be people who say "I dip one level in all schools but evocation (because of the HD and ability to cast in armor), which I advance every time I can".
What if you did this using the ToB-type "1/2 of all other 'class' levels stack" to determine the highest spell level available? That way you don't have to deal with Color sprays at 16th level, but you still wind up significantly weaker than normal.


Someone else may have mentioned this, but I'm tired and distracted and may have missed it.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Naaah, that makes casters too weak. It'd mean you cannot use 9th level spells from 2 schools, which sucks. That's why I suggested that system. You can, say, take Conjurer 10/Illusionist 10, and thus cast level 9 spells from both, and if you tried to 1 level dip all of the schools for the spells, you'd be screwed, so as to avoid cheese.

[Crow]

I don't think this is a bad idea.

If limited to core-only spells, there could be some issues, but with all the splatbooks out there, one school could provide plenty of utility.

I really don't understand why everyone is so against this idea. If you think about the order of magnitude in which primary spellcasters own everyone else as is, it's not a bad fix.

[TheSteelRat]

One school would be an interesting house rule for a game, but I think I'd prefer two since there's usually stuff I want in at least two schools for my character. It'd definitely even the playing field between Wizards and Sorcerers. Wizard's ability to gather a massive amount of spells known definitely offsets the penalty of preparation, especially with higher level divination-style play. Even in a single school with Core, a Sorcerer wouldn't be able to learn more than 2/3rds of the spells in each category if memory serves, while a Wizard can literally get them all with enough time / money invested.

Perhaps 3 Schools with specialization benefits for only selecting 2 or 1? Say, extra spell/day for each school dropped?

As for the idea of making a "Wizard" Class with different levels in each specialty (10 Conjurer / 7 Evoker), you could follow the model set by Martial Maneuvers, and have the "non-class" give you 1/2 its level in the second. So, a taking 10 levels in Conjurer, and then 7 in Evoker gives you equivalent to lvl 12, or 6th level spell access in Evoker. You lose higher level spells, but that's the cost of "multi-schooling."

Cutting off access to higher level spells tends to be balancing, but at the same time even mid-levels are "win" buttons.

[Dausuul]

Here's a possibility, for wizards at least: Traditions of magic, kind of like the ones they were talking about in 4E.

So, for example, you might have the magic of the Dying Rose tradition, which grants necromancy and transmutation; the Incarnate Flame tradition, which grants conjuration, evocation, and all spells with the [Fire] descriptor; et cetera. Obviously, the DM would need to make up a list of traditions which would between them encompass all eight schools.

If you want to learn multiple traditions, you have to take the Eclectic Arcanist prestige class, which has d4 Hit Dice, wizard BAB and skills, and good Will saves. Each odd-numbered level, you learn a new tradition and get to learn 1 new spell from that tradition at each level you can cast; each even-numbered level, you gain a level of spellcasting. (I thought about making Eclectic Arcanist a feat, but it's way too powerful for that; every wizard would take it. Giving up caster levels is a better trade-off.)

Prereqs for Eclectic Arcanist include 8 ranks of Knowledge (Arcana) and the ability to cast 3rd-level arcane spells, and each time you learn a new tradition you must spend at least 1 week studying with a wizard of that tradition who can cast 3rd-level arcane spells.

[Draz74]

Now, as for CoDzilla, that's a bit harder.

To fix the ClericZilla:
Start with a Cloistered Cleric (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#clericVariantCloistere dCleric). Take away the free Knowledge domain. Although you could still give them maybe a couple more Knowledge skills as class skills, if you're feeling generous.

Ban Divine Power as a Cleric spell. Only Clerics with the War domain should get it. I guess non-War clerics won't be too overwhelming if they take Divine Favor and Righteous Might, so we'll let them keep those options.

Make Clerics spontaneous casters, with Spells Known taken from the Sorcerer list, plus domain spells. (This means, at odd-numbered levels, they can't cast any spells of their highest spell level except domain spells.) If they want to be competent healers without spending Spells Known on Cure spells, they'll have to take the Healing domain.

Make Cleric save DC's based on Charisma rather than Wisdom. Bonus spells are still Wis-based.

Take away Turn Undead as a default ability. They can take a Turn Undead or Rebuke Undead feat to regain it. (These feats would have a prereq of having some kind of semi-related domain. Turn Undead requires the Good, Sun, Healing, or Protection domain. Rebuke requires Evil, Death, or Destruction.) Ban Persistent Spell and Nightsticks. (I'm actually OK with other uses of Divine Metamagic.)

All Clerics are proficient with the deity's favored weapon. Strength Domain gives you medium armor proficiency. War domain gives you medium and heavy armor proficiency. Protection gives you shield proficiency.

There, your ClericZilla has been nerfed.

[nhbdy]

I think a balanced approach might be to give some choices, although it's hard to defend from a fluff perspective:

Either Transmutation OR Conjuration

AND

Either Enchantment OR Illusion OR Abjuration

AND

Either Necromancy OR Evocation

AND

Divination AND Universal

So everyone would get 5 different schools, but only 2 of the generally accepted 5 strongest (Conj, Trans, Ench, Ill, Abj). You could tweak this a little, but I think the idea is good.


Example:

Time Stop is Trans, Cloudkill is Conj. You can't have both. Furthermore, Celerity is also transmutation, so you can do Celerity+Time Stop, but then you have limited options for what to do after that. Forcecage is Evocation, so if you want that you need to give up all Necromancy spells. Dimensional Anchor is Abj, so you can't do Dimensional Anchor + Forcecage.

Glitterdust and Grease are Conj, so you can't have those and stuff like Time Stop or Polymorph.


Edit: I should add, a houserule that I use (and which I find very reasonable) is that you can't case Shadow Evocation if you have Evoc as a banned school, and same for Shadow Conjuration.

I like this, but if we apply all of this stuff to wizards alone, wouldn't it become the weakest caster?

[Chronos]

I like this, but if we apply all of this stuff to wizards alone, wouldn't it become the weakest caster?Yes, as the OP admitted.


Naaah, that makes casters too weak. It'd mean you cannot use 9th level spells from 2 schools, which sucks.As opposed to getting 9th level spells from 0 schools, like fighters? Really, any 9th-level spell, of any school, is darned close to game-breaking. And Wish is universal, so everyone'd still get that.

[tainsouvra]

I'm not asking whether this would balance wizards against other primary casters (obviously it would make them far weaker than other primary casters unless they were treated similarly) -- rather, I'm looking at what this would do to wizards as they compare to non-casters if they were otherwise left completely untouched (no taking away metamagic feats or other goodies).

Thoughts? There is a massive flaw in this idea. The problem with Wizards isn't spell selection, it's the incredible power of certain spells. Limiting the number of schools available to a Wizard does nothing to limit the power of those spells, it just limits each particular Wizard to only using certain ones.

In effect, the game will be broken just as often by powerful magic, but each Wizard will only break it in one or two ways at a time. The game stays just as imbalanced, but is now also more restrictive.

Not a fan of this solution, I must say.

[Idea Man]

They did something similar with sorcerer. Warmage. I think they gave that a bit too much in compensation for loss of other schools, but that's the basic idea.